Mojo
Mostly harmless
Once it was about 18 months. He went back to his shroud thread, then eventually abandoned that again and started a new thread about immortality, only to see it merged back into the old one.
Proof of Immortality, VI
- Thread starter jond
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Once it was about 18 months. He went back to his shroud thread, then eventually abandoned that again and started a new thread about immortality, only to see it merged back into the old one.
Jabba
Philosopher
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jond
Illuminator
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Indeed, many of us have tried. But you have no interest in being educated because you imagine that you're the one who should be doing the educating. The jury can clearly see how that's worked out for you.
Belz...
Fiend God
Everybody tried except you.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Quite a of people tried, and not just us here at JREF/ISF. And the manner in which you received their efforts does not reflect well upon you. If uncritical approval is what you seek by going online, then pursue something unequivocally praiseworthy. These charades of debates have small intrinsic value and cast you ultimately in an unflattering character.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
I think you are wrong. It is apparent that there is some degree of selective blindness to how it might appear at all. One can observe this when the appeal to an army of silent lurkers is trotted out. The Apollo Hoax is a classic. Wingnuts like Cosmored/FatFreddy/insert alias of choice wheeled this out on a regular basis.
The argument (with variations) runs "You may all disagree with me, but my silent army of anonymous supporters fully accept <point of contention>".
This, of course leads to certain questions.
- Who are these people?
- How do you know they support you? Or even exist?
And so forth. There are many holes in that Swiss cheese.
So back to this thread in particular. It is Jabba's claim that a neutral jury composed of unbiased individuals would concede. Who are those jurors? And why have they not made themselves known? And how exactly is this claim different from the immortality claim? or the shroud claim? or the god claim?
I Am The Scum
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The odds of their existence seems low.
Honestly, I think it's just a bad inference. My ideas seem reasonable to me, therefore, the reasonable people of the world would agree with me. In addition, anyone who disagrees must not be reasonable.
Belz...
Fiend God
Sounds reasonable.
slyjoe
Illuminator
I seem to remember a poll regarding Jabba's silent lurkers. Asking how many did not believe Jabba's argument vs. how many did.
The results if I remember correctly had a 0 in the denominator.
The results if I remember correctly had a 0 in the denominator.
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Sure, from Jabba's perspective. I mean the character has has created for himself is unflattering (maybe "unattractive" is the word I meant) from a more objective point of view. You don't have to be a hard-boiled skeptic to see the humor in, "But my mom thinks I'm cool!" And if some outsider were to objectively evaluate the degree of detachment from criticism that Jabba exhibits in this thread alongside claims of general acceptance, I think he would conclude objectively that the acclaim is imaginary and that someone who relies on it is operating on a more wishful basis than he thinks. That's the sense in which I say that Jabba has painted an unflattering picture of himself. He has simply opened himself up to more third-party ridicule that will itself then have to be explained away in terms of ever-more imaginary lurkers.
None of that in any way disputes your observation that this sort of litigant tends to rely on building castles in the sky. All the fringe claimants I have encountered either claim that they aren't on the fringe, or that they will soon be joined on the fringe by a stampede of converted mainstreamers. They all have delusions regarding the objective appeal of their claims.
He hasn't answered that question in terms of this debate. But I asked him these questions in the Shroud thread. After a predictable delay in which he avoided the question entirely, the only answer he provided was a link back to a bibliography page from one of the Shroud web sites he was mining for sources. I think the answers in that foreign thread speak volumes to what his answers might be in this thread.
Who are they? In this thread I think they're just a faceless imaginary horde. In that thread they were people upon whom he had relied to argue his case here. This is why a lot of legitimate authorities I know simply shy away altogether from fringe debates. Even though they would be legitimate authorities on the relevant facts and reasoning, some of the people in these sorts of debates seem literally incapable of understanding that inference is directed. Just because you draw conclusion X from something someone else has said doesn't mean you can cite that person as authority for X. The inability to separate a statement from a further conclusion draw on the basis of it is a hallmark of fringe argumentation. It denies that the claimant's conclusory behavior is anything that needs examination.
How do you know they support you? In the Shroud case it's clear they didn't. Few if any of the people on Jabba's list could be said even to know who Jabba is, much less know of his activities here and express support for them. It's more a matter of, "These are people who I think would support me if they were given the chance." But that's still awfully presumptive.
Bad, but comforting. I think it's human nature to regard ourselves individually as more reasonable than we objectively are. The Bible even alludes to this, and Jabba would do well to take note that no matter how justified a person is in his own eyes, it doesn't fool God. But wrath of God aside, a person's standard of what's reasonable is liable to default to his own personal view. And as I wrote above, fringe claimants often seem to have a very skewed view of how reasonable their claims are when seen objectively. As you say: A person presumes himself to be reasonable, therefore his ideas to be reasonable because they came from a reasonable person. A person presumes that there are enough others like him out there that he doesn't have to defend his individuality too much.
A person presumes that those who disagree with him must be unreasonable because they disagree with what is "given" as reason, but I think this bears additional examination in Jabba's world. Jabba fogged it up by suggesting there were different standards of reasonableness pertaining to different modes of thought. What might seem unreasonable in an "analytical" world might be perfectly reasonable in a "holistic" world. That's slightly less annoying that being outright called irrational, but it still smells like that same form of elitism. Plus, as I mentioned several times before, you don't get to claim to be able to prove something analytically but also reserve the right to invoke whatever mush-headed nonsense you want to fill the gaping holes.
slyjoe
Illuminator
Number of people who didn't believe Jabba vs those who did =
NotBelieve/Believe.
I meant denominator (on purpose even
)
is its reciprocal immortal?
Belz...
Fiend God
Did he really leave?
1. He'll be back
2. and if "now" isn't what we think it is...
2.1 ..then he'll have been back in the future last week
3. Anyway, his claim is that if you add the number of people
3.1 who have ever lived
3.2 to the people who have never lived
3.2 to the people who have never lived
3.21 and subtract the people who have died (because they forgot to be immortal)
4. Then you get a very big number, which approaches
5. So magic exists.
6. And he'll be back (again).
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
Quick! Lock the thread and turn off all the lights!
Jabba
Philosopher
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Dave,
1. I’m back!
2. Can’t help myself.
3. Simple Bayesian formula: P(I|E)=P(E|I)*P(I)/P(E)
4. I: I’m immortal
5. E: I currently exist
6. If I allow for
6.1. a 1% prior probability for my immortality, and
6.2. an unimaginably small number for the prior probability of me currently existing, and
7. If P(E|I) is NOT an example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy,
7.1. P(I|E)=1*.01/.00000000000…1=.9999999…9, and
7.2. I must be immortal.
8. Am I using the formula properly?
1. I’m back!
2. Can’t help myself.
3. Simple Bayesian formula: P(I|E)=P(E|I)*P(I)/P(E)
4. I: I’m immortal
5. E: I currently exist
6. If I allow for
6.1. a 1% prior probability for my immortality, and
6.2. an unimaginably small number for the prior probability of me currently existing, and
7. If P(E|I) is NOT an example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy,
7.1. P(I|E)=1*.01/.00000000000…1=.9999999…9, and
7.2. I must be immortal.
8. Am I using the formula properly?
Belz...
Fiend God
I never doubted you for a second!
Fringe reset! Why would you use your experience here to adjust your theory, eh?
Why would you allow for any of that? You've never actually answered that question.
It is.
It's also not the only fatal flaw in your argument, as you well know.
Non sequitur.
No. Your premises are unjustified, your logic nonsensical and your conclusion unrelated to any of it.
It's a complete fail.
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
Oh no. Another fringe reset.
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
No, of course you're not. You can't even do simple arithmetic. 1*0.01/.000000000....1, whatever that piece of mathematical gibberish actually means, is not equal to 1; it's many orders of magnitude greater (or possibly, depending on what the hell you think you're doing, infinite). Getting a probability greater than 1 should be a bit of a hint that you've completely ballsed up your calculations, don't you think?
Just to give you a hand, pulling probabilities from nether orifices is the origin of the problem.
Dave
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